With MBA applications down at most top business schools, the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University is reporting a nearly 15% rise in applications to 2,100 this year from 1,791.

The jump follows an 8% drop in applications to Johnson a year earlier, but is unusual among a large number of prominent schools that are reporting declines. Only a four-hour drive away from Johnson’s campus in Ithaca, N.Y., for example, Columbia Business School suffered a 19% plunge in MBA applications—the difference of 34 percentage points.

Caulk up the difference to a more aggressive admissions recruitment strategy by Johnson. The school was able to buck the down trend by holding more recruiting efforts for potential applicants, including more than a dozen admissions events in far flung locations around the world, from Asia to Latin America, and opening the door to a larger number of MBA candidates in its applicant pool. Johnson sent acceptances to 519 applicants, about 75 more than last year.

“We decided to give out more offers this year because it was more important to us that we have a one in five chance of getting someone,” Christine Sneva, the director of admissions and financial aid, told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “We were willing to take a chance on that because, with such a small class, if you get one of those five people, it can make a huge difference.”

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported today (Sept. 7) that at least a dozen of its top 30 business schools saw their full-time MBA applications decline year-over-year. So far the most dramatic declines have surfaced at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, where applications plummeted 21%, Columbia (19%), and Michigan State’s Broad School (18%).

In an interview with BusinessWeek, Timothy Smith, the senior associate director of admissions and financial aid at the Kelley School, attributed the decline in applications to increased competition from rival business schools and rival programs. “The pool has been fragmented most aggressively this year with part-time, online, and other options,” Smith told the magazine. “There is no doubt about it, the number of students hasn’t increased, and there are more players at the table. At the same time, [employer] sponsorship for full-time MBA programs is almost nonexistent, and doing an MBA part-time or online can be an attractive offer for some students, especially when there is funding available.”

The double-digit declines at Columbia and NYU have been attributed to massive layoffs on Wall Street and in the financial sector.